The leader of al-Qaida has called for holy war against the United States and Israel over an anti-Islamic video which triggered mayhem in the Muslim world.
Ayman al-Zawahiri praised as demonstrators who breached the US embassy in Cairo and the attackers who stormed the US consulate in Benghazi last month in violence linked to the film as "honest and zealous".
The Benghazi attack on 11 September, in which the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three others were killed, is now believed to have been carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants.
The trailer for the film produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a California-based Egyptian-American angry at the treatment of Christians in his homeland, triggered mayhem across the Muslim world after it was uploaded to YouTube, with at least 17 people killed in violent protests.
In an audio message released by al-Qaida's media arm As-Sahab and posted on militant websites on Saturday, al-Zawahiri claimed Washington had allowed the film's production under the pretext of freedom of expression, "but this freedom did not prevent them from torturing Muslim prisoners". » | Staff and agencies | Saturday, October 13, 2012
